Lombard King Desiderius was in a good position in the spring of 771. Two daughters were married to dukes, and another had recently wed Charles, a king of Francia. Plus, two troublesome papal ministers were permanently out of the way.

A few months later, it would all start to fall apart with the death of Charles’s brother. And just three years after that, Desiderius would lose his kingdom in northern Italy and be imprisoned in a monastery. His son and heir, Adalgis, was in exile.

Alda, the Frankish teenage heroine of my novel The Cross and the Dragon, sees Desiderius as a madman who refused a bribe of gold in exchange for returning conquered lands. But the Lombard king’s story is much more complicated, a tale of power, intrigue, family honor, and revenge.

Intervening in Papal Succession

To understand Desiderius’s story, it helps to go back to 767, when Pope Paul I is dying. At this time, Desiderius had been king for 11 years, having seized power in a coup with Paul’s brother and predecessor as an ally. The alliance lasted only a few months, and the relationship between Rome and Pavia was uneasy because of a territorial dispute.

When Paul’s death was imminent in June 767, four aristocratic brothers from Roman Tuscany seized control of Rome, and one of them, Constantine, was elevated to the papacy, even though he was a layman (never mind canon law).

Papal minister Christopher and his son, Sergius, opposed this move but were forced to take refuge in the basilica of Saint Peter. They were allowed to leave when they asked to retire to a monastery, a common repository for political opponents. Instead of traveling to the monastery, they visited the duke of Spoleto and asked him to take them to his king, Desiderius. After hearing their case, Desiderius lent his support in the form of Spoletan soldiers and Waldipert, a Lombard priest.

The forces retook Rome and arrested Constantine. But Desiderius was not above installing a pope of his own liking. Waldipert and some Romans grabbed Philip, the chaplain at the monastery of Saint Vitas, and acclaimed him pope, with the intent of making him a figurehead. On Christopher’s bidding, Philip was quickly sent home and a cleric named Stephen was elevated to pope.

Eighth-century justice was brutal, even in Rome. Accused of plotting to kill Christopher and hand Rome over to the Lombards, Waldipert was blinded, and his tongue was cut out, the same fate as Constantine and some of his followers. Waldipert died of his injuries.

Desiderius holding court in what is believed to be an illustration to Alessandro Manzoni’s Adelchi, a 19th century tragedy (public domain image via Wikimedia Commons).

Vengeance

Desiderius probably wanted revenge, but he had to wait a few years. In the meantime, there was an opportunity to build an alliance with a Frankish king. King Pepin, who also had the title of patrician of Rome, died in September 768, and his sons, Charles and Carloman, succeeded him.

No one knows whose idea it was for Charles to marry one of Desiderius’s daughters, but it had the full support of Queen Mother Bertrada, even though Charles was already married. The Church saw itself as the protector of marriage, but it was not a sacrament in those days. (Desiderius also wanted Charles’s sister to marry Lombard Prince Adalgis, but that idea was nixed on the Frankish side.)

In 770, the pope was upset when he heard rumors of the Lombard-Frankish marriage, and a strongly worded letter that bears his name opposes the idea. Bertrada went on a mission to ensure peace between her sons, the duke of Bavaria who was also the kings’ first cousin and Desiderius’s son-in-law, the pope, and the Lombard king. She returned to Francia with the Lombard princess.

For Desiderius, Bertrada’s diplomacy had the added benefit of distancing the anti-Lombard Christopher from the pope. Around Easter 771, Pope Stephen sent a message that “the most abominable Christopher and his most wicked son, Sergius,” schemed with one of Carloman’s men to kill him. The intervention of “our most excellent son, King Desiderius,” saved the day. But the pope was also distressed to report that Christopher and Sergius were blinded. Because of the handiwork of Desiderius’s ally Paul Afiarta, Christopher died of his wounds while his son was imprisoned.

Downfall

King Carloman’s death at age 20 in December 771 changed Desiderius’s fate. Charles seized his brother’s lands, even though Carloman had two young sons. To solidify his place as king of all Francia, he repudiated the Lombard princess and married a young woman from the Agilolfing clan, an important family in Carloman’s former kingdom.

The divorce was an insult to Desiderius, and he must have seen an opportunity for revenge when Carloman’s widow, Gerberga, fled to his court with the boys.

But he had another problem to deal with. Pope Stephen died February 3, 772. While Stephen was sick, Paul Afiarta exiled or imprisoned enemies and for good measure, had the blinded Sergius strangled, but his efforts to succeed Stephen failed. Deacon Hadrian, Afiarta’s enemy, was made pope, freed prisoners and exiles, and ordered an investigation of Afiarta, who was later executed. Hadrian was no friend of Desiderius.

Two months into Hadrian’s papacy, Desiderius risked Frankish intervention and invaded papal territories, trying to pressure Hadrian to anoint Carloman’s sons as kings, one way to avenge the insult to his daughter. The pope refused. Even as Desiderius was conquering papal cities, Hadrian was reluctant to ask for Charles’s aid, wanting to preserve Italy’s independence.

The pope’s threat of anathema kept the Lombards away for a while, but the pressure got to be too much. Hadrian asked for Charles’s intervention. In 773, Charles, who had just fought his first war with the Saxons, tried diplomacy and offered gold in exchange for the conquered territory.

Desiderius’s camp

Desiderius refused, which at first seems baffling because he did not want a war with the Franks. His predecessor was forced to make territorial concessions when a Frankish king invaded Italy 17 years ago. Perhaps, Desiderius thought the pope would demand an invasion anyway. In that case, holding onto the territory would weaken his opponent.

Desiderius might also have thought that he would lose lands but not his whole kingdom. Charles’s father, Pepin, had been content with a treaty. Once the Franks’ backs were turned, Desiderius might have reasoned, he could reconquer lost territory, just as he did a few months into his reign. For details about Charles’s first war in Lombardy, see my earlier post about Charles’s family feud and the fate of the Church.

In the end, things for Desiderius turned out far worse than he might have imagined. Perhaps Charles thought that if he didn’t remove Desiderius from the throne, he would continue to threaten Rome and distract the pope from praying for Francia, an important duty in age that believed in divine intervention.

To Charles, the prayers worked. After months of holding siege with Desiderius in Pavia, Charles went to Rome for Easter in early April 774. The Lombard city finally fell that June.

Sources

“Pavia and Rome: The Lombard Monarchy and the Papacy in the Eighth Century,” an excellent scholarly article by Jan T. Hallenbeck, published in 1982 by Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.

Sculptures of martyrs in the Lombard Temple show what women might have worn (from Wikimedia Commons)

All we can say with certainty about King Charles’s (Charlemagne’s) second wife is that she was a Lombard princess, the daughter of King Desiderius and Queen Ansa, and that she was married to the Frankish king for about a year (770-71).

We don’t even know for certain what her name was. Because of a misreading of a medieval book, she has been called Desiderata, but scholarship from historian Janet L. Nelson indicates her name might have been Gerperga.

Yet what little we know of her illustrates what was expected of an aristocratic woman, particularly a royal one, in eighth century Europe.

Desiderius and Ansa apparently had one son and four daughters. They expected their son, Adalgis, to succeed his father as king. Before Desiderius seized power in a coup in 756, his eldest daughter, Anselperga, became an abbess. Not a bad gig for a medieval woman, who could treat the abbey as her fiefdom and still have an influence on worldly affairs. In addition, prayers from her abbey would help ensure that God was on her family’s side.

After he became king, Desiderius and Ansa made sure their other daughters’ marriages were politically advantageous to their realm in northern Italy. Princess Adelperga married the duke of Benevento in southern Italy, and Princess Luitperga married the duke of Bavaria, King Charles’s first cousin, whose territory was to Lombardy’s northwest.

Exactly who initiated marriage negotiations to have Charles marry Gerperga is unknown, but it had the full support of Desiderius and Charles’s widowed mother, Bertrada.

A letter bearing Pope Stephen’s name shows a man very upset that a Frankish king, either Charles or his brother, Carloman, might marry the daughter of his political enemy. Frankish Queen Mother Bertrada went on a diplomatic mission to ensure peace between her sons, reassure the pope that it would be in Rome’s best interest to allow the marriage to go through, then go to Lombardy and return to Francia with the princess.

As is common in medieval marriages, Gerperga likely would have been a teenager. Technically, a woman had to consent to a marriage, but that consent could be beaten or starved out of someone. It is easy to say these women were pawns, but their position is more complex than that.

For one thing, a father, or a mother acting as regent, could just as easily order a son’s marriage. Charles and Carloman were already married on their father’s order, something the pope points out in his outraged letter arguing against a Frankish royal marriage to a Lombard. Desiderius wanted Adalgis to marry Charles’s sister, but that idea was nixed on the Frankish side.

Another thing to consider is when a character in a historical novel complains of a “useless girl,” he is mistaken. In arranging their children’s marriages, Desiderius and Ansa did not consider the girls useless. They relied on the three who were married to secure alliances, two of them close to Lombardy. Even after Desiderius lost his kingdom, there is evidence of the princesses’ influence as wives. In later years, Luitperga would be accused of encouraging her husband’s disloyalty to Charles, and Adelperga would temporarily assume power in Benevento after her husband’s and elder son’s deaths.

We have no clue of how any of these women, including Gerperga, felt about the choices their parents had made for them. Was Gerperga happy her father had chosen a 22-year-old, tall, and broad with muscle rather than an old man? Did she have any misgivings that Charles was setting aside a Frankish woman to marry her? Did she marry him because of a sense of duty to her country?

Just as Gerperga’s marriage was created by politics, so was it destroyed. King Carloman died at age 20 in December 771, and Charles seized his brother’s lands, even though Carloman had two young sons. To solidify his place as king of all Francia, he repudiated the Lombard princess and married a young woman from an important family in Carloman’s former kingdom.

To Desiderius, the repudiation of his daughter was an insult, and it might have been one reason he sided with Carloman’s widow, Gerberga, when she sought his aid to have her sons anointed as Frankish kings. The war that followed in 773-74 was a high stakes family feud involving the fate of Rome. (For more on Charles’s war in Lombardy, see my previous posts in Unusual Historicals and Historical Fiction Research).

The ultimate fate of Charles’s second wife remains a mystery. A 16th century writer using a now-lost 8th century document calls her Berchthraeda and says she was sent home gravely ill and died in childbirth, bearing a son. He also says Charles married someone to whom he had been previously betrothed, and there’s not much evidence of that.

The Royal Frankish Annals say an unnamed Lombard princess was captured, along with Desiderius and Ansa, when Pavia fell in 774 after a long siege, but they are silent on what happened to her afterward. If Gerperga was captured in Pavia, it is possible that she wound up in a cloister, the repository for many of Charles’s troublesome relatives.

Sources

After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, edited by Walter A. Goffart, Alexander C. Murray, University of Toronto Press, 1998 “Chapter 9: Making a Difference in Eighth-Century Politics: The Daughters of Desiderius,” Janet L. Nelson, pp. 171-190

An author of historical fiction must take the point of view, her characters’, even if she doesn’t completely agree with it. As fond as I am of Alda, the heroine of The Cross and the Dragon, I find her view of eighth-century Lombard King Desiderius oversimplified.

To the teenage Frankish noblewoman, he is an enemy of Rome, and therefore the Church. Her king, Charles, cannot refuse the pope’s pleas for aid, despite concerns about hostilities with the neighboring Saxons.

Yet after doing research about Desiderius for Tinney Sue Heath’s Historical Fiction Research blog, I found his situation was complex, even though he was not a nice guy.

Even centuries after the events, one of Charlemagne’s family feuds inspired artists, such as Antoine Verard. His 1493 hand-painted print in Chronicles of France depicts King Charles meeting with Pope Hadrian I in the 770s.

The true story that inspired this image involves Charles and his ex-father-in-law, along with his widowed sister-in-law and her sons, and the fate of Rome hung in the balance. For more, I invite you to read my guest post on Unusual Historicals.

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About Me

I write fiction set in early medieval times, an intersection of faith, family, and power. My latest release is Queen of the Darkest Hour, in which Fastrada must stop a conspiracy before it shatters the realm. For more about me and my fiction, visit kimrendfeld.com or contact me at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Queen of the Darkest Hour

Short Story: Betrothed to the Red Dragon

The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar

The Cross and Dragon

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